Peter Connelly

Peter Connelly (born September 8, 1972) is a video game composer and sound designer best known for his work on the action-adventure Tomb Raider series. He has been part of several award-winning video game releases working mainly with Core Design, Eutechnyx and Ubisoft.

Having worked on sound design and composed soundtracks for more than 30 video games, Connelly is best known for scoring three of the largely successful releases in the Tomb Raider series, an action-adventure video game developed by the series' original creators Core Design.

After finishing his work as senior sound designer on the critically acclaimed fifth instalment Driver: San Francisco of Driver series, created and developed by Ubisoft Reflections, Connelly announced that his latest work would be the audio lead on Watch Dogs, a highly awaited AAA title by Ubisoft Montreal.

Connelly has shown interest for music and sounds since his early ages. He brought his passion into writing and recording music and went on experimenting with a wide spectrum of sounds, as well as new music directions, including various music technologies such as synthesizers, samplers and especially fairlights.

He trained on a variety of instruments like the cello, guitar and the piano since his childhood, Connelly also holds an OND and an HND in Music Technology at Newcastle College.

He cites John Williams and Danny Elfman as one of his primary inspiration sources which contributed to his work and development as a composer in the long run.

Connelly is engaged to his fiancée Emma Craggs with whom he has two sons, Sean Ian Connelly (born 2007), Patrick William Connelly (born 2012) and a daughter, Cara Catherine Elizabeth Connelly (born 2013).

Early work

After graduating from Newcastle College with both an Ordinary and a Higher National Diploma in Music Technology, Connelly started his professional career in the mid-'90s as a composer and sound designer for various video games on PC and PlayStation.

From 1995 to 1998, he worked for several different companies including Interactive Technologies Europe, NMS Software and Ingames Interactive where he was responsible for the soundtracks and sound effects of whole nine video games.

Core Design and Tomb Raider

In September 1998, Connelly joined Derby-based studio Core Design, a subsidiary of UK video game publisher Eidos Interactive and creators and developers of action-adventure series Tomb Raider.

As part of Core Design, Connelly worked on the additional sound design for Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft and later on as a leading composer for Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, where later was co-written with Martin Iveson.

For the first time in the series' history, Connelly and Iveson teamed up with an orchestra to record the score for the next instalment: Angel of Darkness. The entire orchestral score written by Connelly and Iveson, was performed by the renowned London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, London using Studio 1 to record the orchestra and Studio 3 to mix down in, both, stereo and 5.1 surround.

With this being one of the unique selling propositions of the game, The Angel of Darkness marks the first time a Tomb Raider soundtrack has ever seen an official release, as an eight-track soundtrack CD was part of the EU-exclusive Limited Collector's Edition of the game.

Although being the most controversial game of the Tomb Raider series, The Angel of Darkness has been generally praised by both critics and fans of the series for its outstanding soundtrack.

Besides the Tomb Raider series, Connelly went on to score also several other commercially successful games at Core Design, such as Herdy Gerdy, Smart Bomb, and Free Running.

Ubisoft

Connelly is currently based at Ubisoft Reflections, long-time developers and creators of the well-known Driver series, where he worked as senior sound designer on Driver: San Francisco, the most recent instalment in the series. After completion of Driver, Connelly was contracted as Audio Lead and Composer on both Watch Dogs and The Crew, two of Ubisoft's highly awaited AAA titles.

Peter Connelly Ltd

Connelly also owns his very own studio company of music composition, music production, sound engineering and sound design Peter Connelly Ltd,( formerly known as Universal Sound Design) where he is currently recording an album with Lily Brooke Widdowson.

Music and sound design

• The Crew (2014) (with Joseph Trapanese)
• Watch Dogs (2014)
• Horrid Henry (2009)
• Speed Zone/Wheelspin' (2009)
• Garden Party (2008)
• Smartbomb (2005)
• Podz (2004)
• Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness(2003) (with Martin Iveson)
• Herdy Gerdy (2002) (with Martin Iveson)
• Tomb Raider: Chronicles (2000)
• Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999)
• Flesh Feast (1998)
• Mass Destruction (1997)
• Risk II (1996)
• Battleship (1996)

Audio director and sound design

• Hot Wheels: Beat That! (2008)
• Pimp My Ride (2008)
• Cartoon Network Racing (2007)
• Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift (2006)
• Hummer Badlands (2005)

Sound design

• Driver: San Francisco (2011) (as senior sound designer)
• PopStar Guitar (2008)

Additional sound design

• Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (2008)
• Free Running (2007)
• Tomb Raider III (1998)

Orchestral arrangement

• Emergency Heroes (2008)